


The Extra-Ordinary Life of Kielo

by DearSweetAnon



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: -Ish, Alternate Universe - Medieval, F/M, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Medieval AU, Minor Character Death, Sweden - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 03:15:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6267337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DearSweetAnon/pseuds/DearSweetAnon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kielo's life was perfectly boring and strange. Until it wasn't, and she wasn't sure how it got to be like that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Extra-Ordinary Life of Kielo

**Author's Note:**

> Kielo-Fem Finland  
> Astrid-Fem Sweden  
> Anita-Fem Norway  
> Mathilde-Fem Denmark  
> Jolanta-Fem Poland  
> Perla-Fem Iceland  
> Aniese-Fem Kugelmugel  
> Eduard's Wife-Fem Latvia  
> Astrid's Husband-Russia  
> Anita's Husband-Belarus  
> Mathilde's Husband-Netherlands  
> Orjan-Ladonia  
> Astrid's Cousin-Sweden
> 
> This takes place 6th-14th century Sweden (it's a long gap, I know). The Oxenstierna family house still stands in Gamla Stan, Stockholm today. So yeah

Kielo was quiet. She was sitting silently by the fire, as she always did. It wasn’t like she normally did, however, because today she wasn’t thinking, but remembering.   
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________-  
Life in the village was tough. Kielo wasn’t that affected by the droughts, or bad crop years. She wasn’t bothered by the disasters that happened far out in the woods to the lumberjacks, or the fights in the south of the country. Her main problems were little childish things, like kisses.   
Kisses were horrible. Boys would sidle up, and ask for a quick peck. Anita would hit them when they even just walked up. No-one asked her very often. Mathilde would only laugh like it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. No-one asked her, because they felt embarrassed.   
Only one person ever asked Kielo. She had only said yes because Eduard was her neighbour, and her friend, and it had been his brother (Eduard would never ask). She’d refused everyone else, but not Toris. Anyway, it hadn’t been worth it because afterwards Jolanta had glared at her and been tearful and told her cousin (very loudly) that “Kielo’s a jezebel! She kissed my Toris!”, so all in all it wasn’t worth it.  
People had never asked Astrid until one day when Gilbert (always the bravest) stuttered out an ask. Astrid had been overwhelmed, blushing and flustered, but she’d readily done it. There was shock from everyone, and it wasn’t really until almost all the boys had got a kiss from her that anyone realised she was actually very nice, and just stony-faced.   
Primary school years ended and soon lots of girls were married off, only twelve or thirteen. Jolanta got her Toris, and Mathilde ended up with an older guy (but not much older. Only fifteen). She had to drop out of school, which she was so angry about but later Kielo found out that he had continued to teach her in secret, and all in all she did well. A reasonably well off, kind husband was better than Astrid’s lot.  
A tall, scary guy of about twenty. He was unknown to everyone but Astrid’s parents and scared all the village children. He bought her hunting dogs, flattered her with compliments, then whisked her away to the woodcutter’s village in the forest. And so, Kielo forgot all about her for many years.  
__________________________________________________________________________________  
When they reached fifteen, Anita left school. They had been the only two girls left, and now she would be alone. Anita had had a husband found for her, a woodcutter, and so it was away to the village with her. Kielo was maid of honour, and it turned out that the boy was brother to Astrid’s husband. And indeed, there was Astrid, child in arms, standing behind her husband. She seemed timid, quieter even than she had been as a younger child. The boy she cuddled to her chest was short, and ginger, and looked a lot like her, but nothing like his father.   
Kielo was still the old maid of her village. Her parents tried hard to find her husband, but to no avail. Even Eduard, that she might have married, had been snapped up. A sweet girl, timid and shy but suitable for him. Still, that left no-one for Kielo, and that was a travesty for her parents.   
__________________________________________________________________________________  
Joy of joys, by eighteen she was married. A boy had come to the village, his brother already set to marry Guinevere, and he had noticed the old maid of the town. Sweeter and shier than Eduard’s young wife, Matthew was kind to her, and courted her well. By the time she was twenty six, she had a son and a good life, and she had never once thought about Astrid, or even Anita, who had been such a good friend to her. She only thought of her sweet Peter, and smiled fondly when she saw him sidle up to a girl and ask for a kiss. No thought was spared for the woodcutters’ wives.   
__________________________________________________________________________________That is until one dark winter, when it was dark young in the night, and the woodcutters’ village was far out in the woods, and it wasn’t really considered anyone’s fault that the furnace was faulty, and it was luck really that meant that Anita and Astrid and Örjan and Perla weren’t dead.   
They trudged into town, tattered dresses and scuffed jackets. Mathilde was so sweet and concerned. She immediately welcomed Anita and her little daughter into their home (it was only too sad that Perla didn’t make it past six, with her big purple eyes and snowy hair), smiling and chastising her husband for his stony face at the prospect of guests.   
Marriage had really changed Mathilde, but she was still the happy, caring girl she had been at twelve, and fifteen, and twenty, when she had her child, and when she tearfully told Astrid that there was physically not enough room for her with them. Astrid, to her credit, was extremely accepting. She just nodded, and shrugged.   
__________________________________________________________________________________  
Kielo shook her head to remove the snow. She flashed Eduard a quick smile as she passed by the bar in the tavern and continued to the back room to see Astrid. As it transpired, Astrid was an amazing needle worker, a fact only brought to light by the fact that Anita had coldly refused Mathilde’s offer to darn a stocking (“No, you’ll only break it. Astrid will do it, she makes- made. She made everyone’s clothes in the village.”). Soon Astrid was inundated with requests, and had made enough to move into the back room of the tavern. She could even send her son to school on Mondays and Wednesdays, and had meat once a week.   
On this particular Monday, Kielo was going to ask Astrid to make Peter a new outfit. Astrid doted on all the children, and she was sure it would be no problem. As she walked quicker to the back, she noted that Astrid’s son was cross-legged outside their room.   
“Mama’s gone out to send a letter. No more making requests, just mending and laundry.” Kielo turned on her heel and walked away. She didn’t like talking to Örjan, he was too rude and too arrogant. But, all children are angels in their mother’s eyes, and Astrid could see no fault in him. Ever.  
__________________________________________________________________________________  
Though no-one had ever thought to ask Astrid’s maiden surname, it turned out that she was one of the powerful Oxenstierna family. No-one was sure how a member of such a family had ended up in rural Småland, but there she was. The letter she had sent a few weeks prior to the week of Midsomar was addressed to her cousin in Stockholm, and it came to be that he arrived in the village to sweep her away, back to Stockholm. Sweep her he did, into his arms (literally) and Örjan too, away back to Stockholm. No-one really had time to process what was happening until Anita stepped out of the van Zoort’s home with a shout, and soon she was away with them too.  
Kielo smiled sadly to herself as she thought. Surely the whole reason Anita left with them was to escape the poverty, was everyone’s first thought at the time. Kielo herself reasoned that it must have had something to do with the memory of little Perla, who still haunted that house. And no-one was sure about life as a woodcutter’s wife was hard and solitary, and friends are friends? No-one could deny that Astrid had been happy to take her with them, and nothing brings women into sisterhood like being treated like punching bags. At the time, Kielo had bitterly put them out of her mind, forgotten for a third time.   
_______________________________________________________________________________________________  
Kielo was soon forty, and Matthew was long dead. Peter was kind, her sweet salvation, and without him she would surely be dead. She mattered not to the other villagers; many that she’d grown up with were also dead. Only Eduard’s sweet little wife could spare her a minute, Eduard himself gone a winter or two ago.   
In the longest winter that Kielo had known since the one that had killed Anita’s child (a cute child, was all Kielo could remember, all eyes, but nothing else) and Kielo was struggling. She lived with Peter and his wife Valborga, a woman who had no love for Kielo, but plenty of respect for Peter. Often Kielo would stand outside in the snow and think about the people she’d known, sadly gone now. She’d think about old friends, and old flames.  
Shaking her head to clear the dark shadow looming over her, Kielo noticed she was sitting in a literal shadow. She looked up to see a shape silhouetted against the sun. She squeaked in fear, and the shape huffed and shifted. Shielding her eyes she examined the person glaring at her. His ginger hair and face shape reminded her of an old friend, but the huge scar was foreign to her. A cog in her mind clicked and tripped her memory.  
“Örjan?”  
____________________________________________________________________________________________________  
Kielo giggled at the memory of her first encounter with Örjan as an adult. She had been so scared, squeaking in fear. Örjan had just grabbed her arm, bundled up and taken down to Stockholm as a companion for his mother. Anita, cold, beautiful Anita had died only a short while ago and Astrid had been painfully lonely ever since. According to some of the servants, the man who’d “rescued” Astrid was her cousin, and he’d died not long after in the war that had claimed so many men from the village.   
Astrid was one of the sweetest people Kielo had known, but she missed her son and- well, she supposed that Eduard’s wife must be dead by now, without the luxury of the medicine she had. Funny, she’d been so kind to Kielo, but she’d never learnt her name. As Kielo smiled sadly to herself, Anïese rushed past her, giggling. Ah, to be young, just twenty years old and racing around, giddy with love. Soon enough Örjan also came dashing through, chasing after his pretty little wife.   
Kielo smiled fondly at them as they dashed away, she’d had that young fun and beauty once. Not anymore, as her bones were old and her hair grey. But that didn’t matter to Astrid. Astrid was the centre of Kielo’s life, her saviour and her provider. Astrid was truly too kind, something that Kielo had never realised until she arrived in Stockholm, and just lonely and scared of rejection. This was something that Örjan apparently realised, because he was always seeking to please and reassure his mother. The whole Oxenstierna family was truly deceiving with their appearances. 

 

Kielo stood up from her cosy place by the fire, now fully intending to see Astrid. Kielo had lived a full, amazing life. It was just a shame that no-one would ever know.

**Author's Note:**

> I might continue this, probably will make a series. Ask for more in a review? Go on, please?


End file.
